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Johannes P
Aug. 6th, 2021 09:13 amAilz is generally waiting in the car while I explore churches and I don't like to leave her too long- so I don't so much wander round as whip. In the case of the Sevenoaks monuments I lined 'em up, snapped 'em and moved on, thinking I'd study the details from the photographs- which worked fine with Margaret Boswell's but not with this.
A shadow falls across the name of the dear departed and though I've magnified the image to the max I still can't work it out. The first name is Johannes and the second name begins with a P but that's as far as I've got. The Internet has been no use; so far as it's concerned none of these monuments exist. A complicating factor is that the epitaph is entirely in Latin- and while I'm able to make out the odd word here and there I'm just not up to Gavin Williamson's standards and long screeds of text defeat me. The iconography suggests that John P did some soldiering in his time.
Any Latinists out there?
My trawl for information did however turn up a few interesting nuggets about the church. For instance I learned that John Donne was rector at St Nick's for a decade- but (reading between the lines) only in absentia- employing a curate to do the work while drawing the stipend and moving in higher, groovier circles- which was an accepted practice back then- and a goodly reason why there needed to be a revolution. Secondly in 2010 the then vicar and curate gave journalists something to write about by preaching that wives should "submit" to their husbands, insisting that if it was good enough for St Paul it was good enough for them. St Nick's is an evangelical church- meaning cheerful, pushy and socially backward.
Anyway, to return to Johnannes P: I can't find a date on his monument- but I'm going to guess that it's c. 1700. Whoever made it was a more sophisticated artist than the person who made Margaret's Boswell's. The carving is lively and assured- and I love the unhappy babies....
A shadow falls across the name of the dear departed and though I've magnified the image to the max I still can't work it out. The first name is Johannes and the second name begins with a P but that's as far as I've got. The Internet has been no use; so far as it's concerned none of these monuments exist. A complicating factor is that the epitaph is entirely in Latin- and while I'm able to make out the odd word here and there I'm just not up to Gavin Williamson's standards and long screeds of text defeat me. The iconography suggests that John P did some soldiering in his time.
Any Latinists out there?
My trawl for information did however turn up a few interesting nuggets about the church. For instance I learned that John Donne was rector at St Nick's for a decade- but (reading between the lines) only in absentia- employing a curate to do the work while drawing the stipend and moving in higher, groovier circles- which was an accepted practice back then- and a goodly reason why there needed to be a revolution. Secondly in 2010 the then vicar and curate gave journalists something to write about by preaching that wives should "submit" to their husbands, insisting that if it was good enough for St Paul it was good enough for them. St Nick's is an evangelical church- meaning cheerful, pushy and socially backward.
Anyway, to return to Johnannes P: I can't find a date on his monument- but I'm going to guess that it's c. 1700. Whoever made it was a more sophisticated artist than the person who made Margaret's Boswell's. The carving is lively and assured- and I love the unhappy babies....
